Rhacophoridae

Rhacophoridae
The Rhacophoridae are a family of frogs that occur in tropical sub-Saharan Africa, South India and Sri Lanka, Japan, northeastern India to eastern China and Taiwan, south through the Philippines and Greater Sundas, and Sulawesi. They are commonly known as shrub frogs, or more ambiguously as "moss frogs" or "bush frogs". Some Rhacophoridae are called "tree frogs". Among the most spectacular members of this family are numerous "flying frogs".
Although a few groups are primarily terrestrial, rhacophorids are predominantly arboreal treefrogs. Mating frogs, while in amplexus, hold on to a branch, and beat their legs to form a foam. The eggs are laid in the foam and covered with seminal fluid before the foam hardens into a protective casing. In some species, this is done in a large group. The foam is laid above a water source so the tadpoles fall into the water once they hatch.
The species within this family vary in size from . Like other arboreal frogs, they have toe discs, and those of the genus Chiromantis have two opposable fingers on each hand. This family also contains the Old World flying frogs, including Wallace's flying frog (Rhacophorus nigropalmatus). These frogs have extensive webbing between their fore and hind limbs, allowing them to glide through the air.
Taxonomy
Evolution
The Rhacophoridae are the sister group to the Mantellidae, a family of frogs restricted to Madagascar. Both families are thought to have diverged during the Paleocene, although previous studies estimated a Cretaceous divergence. Two different hypotheses for this divergence have been proposed: one that the Mantellidae and Rhacophoridae diverged when Insular India broke from Madagascar, with the Rhacophoridae colonizing the rest of Asia following the collision of India with Asia, and the other proposing that the common ancestors of both families inhabited Asia, with the ancestral Mantellidae colonizing Madagascar from India via long-distance dispersal, using India as a stepping stone.
Genera
Subfamily Buergeriinae Channing, 1989
Buergeria Tschudi, 1838
Subfamily Rhacophorinae Hoffman, 1932 (1858)
Beddomixalus Abraham, Pyron, Ansil, Zachariah, and Zachariah, 2013
Chirixalus Boulenger, 1893
Chiromantis Peters, 1854
Feihyla Frost, Grant, Faivovich, Bain, Haas, Haddad, de Sá, Channing, Wilkinson, Donnellan, Raxworthy, Campbell, Blotto, Moler, Drewes, Nussbaum, Lynch, Green, and Wheeler, 2006
Ghatixalus Biju, Roelants, and Bossuyt, 2008
Gracixalus Delorme, Dubois, Grosjean, and Ohler, 2005
Kurixalus Ye, Fei, and Dubois, 1999
Leptomantis Peters, 1867
Liuixalus Li, Che, Bain, Zhao, and Zhang, 2008
Mercurana Abraham et al., 2013
Nasutixalus Jiang, Yan, Wang, and Che, 2016
Nyctixalus Boulenger, 1882
Philautus Gistel, 1848
Polypedates Tschudi, 1838
Pseudophilautus Laurent, 1943
Raorchestes Biju, Shouche, Dubois, Dutta, and Bossuyt, 2010
Rhacophorus Kuhl and Van Hasselt, 1822
Rohanixalus Biju, Garg, Gokulakrishnan, Chandrakasan, Thammachoti, Ren, Gopika, Bisht, Hamidy, and Shouche, 2020
Taruga Meegaskumbura, Meegaskumbura, Bowatte, Manamendra-Arachchi, Pethiyagoda, Hanken, and Schneider, 2010
Theloderma Tschudi, 1838
Vampyrius Dubois, Ohler, and Pyron, 2021
Zhangixalus Li, Jiang, Ren, and Jiang, 2019
Phylogeny
This phylogeny of the Rhacophoridae is from Yu et al. (2008):
Parasites
As many frogs, rhacophorids harbour monogenean worms in their urinary bladders. The parasite species specialized to this family of frogs belong to the genus Indopolystoma, described in 2019.
References
External links
Amphibian families